The story of a hot chaplain, a not-so-normal chaplain's wife, and two wildly beautiful offspring. Oh, and a little autism on the side:)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Autism on a good day... and a tough day....

Autism on a good day....

Be still my beating heart. Did you hear her? Did it make your heart as happy as it did mine? I mean, to consider where Bella was one year ago and then watch this video.... God is a gracious and merciful Father. She is making so much progress friends, thank you for your continued prayers on her behalf. We feel them... in these moments... and in the moments you will witness below:)

Autism on a tough day...

In this video you see Bella during ABA therapy. She had been tantruming for a good 10 minutes prior to me filming this... and continued afterwards as well. This is by no means her worst tantrum but, I wanted to show the vast behavior changes associated with autism. In this video, we were just trying to get her to say "banana". She was not happy with that, and had been trying to bite herself which is why her therapist was constraining her...

We were also trying to figure out why she was so frustrated to begin with :) Please know that her therapist was not "being mean" by showing so little compassion. ABA therapists work with kids to reward them for positive behavior and they ignore (or don't reward) the negative behaviors. Heart breaking, I know... but it works! We love Sarah (her ABA therapist), she has made a huge impact on Bella (as did her prior therapist Lynette)!

3 comments:

couldn't be prouder of a mama - who is in the trenches - if it makes us cry - it must break your heart - we are carrying you all with our prayerspsalm 61:2 when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to The Rock, that is higher than I

Thanks for sharing this, Annie. Love to you and your beautiful family...and your beautiful peace. "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ." Ephesians 1:3 xox

You are an amazing woman! Such patience and grace! I sure do miss seeing you all the time. I love hearing Bella's sweet voice - she has grown and excelled in so many ways in just a short amount of time.

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This blog was created to give readers a real life sneak peek into military life and deployment by a Navy Chaplain and his wife. We created the blog to help keep in touch with one another and to share the deployment experience with our readers. We hope you enjoy learning more about life in the military and our new found journey with Bella's autism.